In parts of Southeast Asia, thousands of people are being trafficked into “scam centers.” There, they are forced to run online fraud schemes under threats of violence. Victims work long hours, face brutal punishment for missing quotas, and are sometimes coerced into recruiting others, creating a cycle of exploitation. These centers thrive on corruption, weak law enforcement, and digital loopholes, while governments, social media platforms, and the public respond too slowly. 

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This project argues that scam center trafficking is not just a legal failure but a moral and structural one. Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” explains how ordinary people, by failing to think critically, become complicit in sustaining harm. Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the public sphere shows why the issue fails to spark genuine debate as media and state discourse reduce it to spectacle or silence. Finally, Michel Foucault’s insights on hidden power reveal how these systems operate through surveillance, control, and invisibility.

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Scam centers expose a deeper crisis of how evil has become ordinary and control is sustained by silence and compliance. Addressing this requires more than just laws, but confront the moral and structural conditions that sustain trafficking.